New Campaign Functionality: Automated Nudges Coming Soon!
Overview and Important Notes
Appointment Campaigns are used for directed outreach to a specific, known, cohort of students to request that they make an appointment with one or more staff for a specific reason.
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Campaigns can be configured with custom email messages for the initial outreach and subsequent reminders. |
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Campaigns cannot be sent to unknown groups of students and are not “open” such that anyone can join a campaign. Students must be specifically added to campaigns. |
Campaign appointment registration links are unique for each student and are generated by the system as part of the email. THE UNIQUE LINKS GENERATED BY THE CAMPAIGN MUST NOT BE SHARED AND SHOULD NEVER BE FORWARDED TO OTHERS.
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Campaign appointments will not obey certain restrictions:
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Campaigns can be used by most users with existing appointment functionality access, including advisors. Some exceptions apply.
Getting Started
For a successful campaign, a few pieces of information are needed:
Campaign Goal
Campaigns are great for targeted outreach to a known cohort of students to elicit the scheduling of one or more appointments for a specific reason. Anything other than this format can lead to the campaign being less effective, ineffective, or worse, confusing.
Student Cohort
Who is targeted by this campaign? You can always add or remove students from a campaign, even after sending it, but starting with a clean list is important.
Staff Organizers
Which staff will be included in the campaign for scheduling? Remember that any staff included will be schedulable by any students in the same campaign
Custom Messages
Part of the campaign is an initial invitation that can be customized, including basic formatting.
Additional “nudges,” or reminder emails, can be scheduled to send to any students that have yet to complete their campaign participation.
Campaign Settings
What’s the name of the campaign, location and service, the start and end dates, etc.?
Campaign Setup
Create a New Campaign
To begin a new campaign, go to the Campaigns page and select + Add New underneath Appointment Campaigns:
Define Campaign Parameters
Set up the campaign properties and behavior:
1. Specify a name for the campaign. Students do not see this campaign name, only staff can see it. Prefix your campaign name with the current academic term and your department name or abbreviation. This allows for better searching and display of campaigns in the list.
2. Students can be shown additional instructions or notes on the appointment scheduling page, after they click the scheduling link. Specify any additional, brief, instructions for students.
3. Choose the Care Unit that matches the kind of campaign being created (typically Academic Advising or Tutoring & Mentoring).
4. Choose the location to associate with the appointments.
5. Choose the service provided at the selected location. Important: Students can see this service name when scheduling.
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Once the campaign is launched, the Care Unit, Location, and Service cannot be changed. |
6. Specify the Appointment Limit. The value here represents the number of appointments students are expected to have for this campaign. Once this number of appointments is reached
7. Specify the Appointment Length. This is the default duration for campaign appointments.
8. Specify the Slots Per Time value. The value represents the maximum number of students that can schedule for the same appointment time slot. If campaign appointments should be one-on-one, this value should be 1. If campaign appointments can be group appointments, set this value to the maximum for the group.
9. Choose to Allow Scheduling Over Courses or not. If checked, students can schedule appointments during their class time.
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Allowing the scheduling of appointments over course times is not usually allowed and can only be allowed inside of campaigns. Exercise caution and use appropriate judgement when considering enabling this option. |
10. Set the options for staff and student reminders. Reminders can be by email and/or text message. Appointment creation notifications will be sent out regardless.
11. Set the campaign scheduling start date. This is the first date for which students can schedule appointments in this specific campaign.
12. Set the campaign scheduling end date. This is the last date for which students can schedule appointments in this specific campaign.
When these parameters are filled out, click on the Continue button in the lower right of the page. If you’re not ready to continue, choose Save and Exit instead to come back at a later time and pick up where you left off.
Campaign Student Cohort Selection
Use the Advanced Search to add students to the campaign. It’s recommended that your student cohort be predefined and added to a Student List prior to beginning the campaign creation process. If you don’t have the cohort prepared, save and exit from the campaign setup and return when ready.
When your student is cohort has been selected and added to the campaign, click the Continue button to review and verify the selected students. Click on Continue again to proceed to the staff selection step.
Specify Campaign Staff Organizers
Based on the selected Care Unit, Location, and Service in the campaign setup, the staff list will be populated with users that meet those criteria during the specified campaign duration. Choose any applicable staff to include all of their listed available times in this campaign.
Staff can have their availability either be dedicated to the campaign (meaning only campaign students can see this dedicated time) or link their existing appointment availability to the campaign.
If no staff have campaign availability defined, the campaign will default to including regular appointment availabilities.
With staff selected, click the Continue button to proceed to setting up the messaging.
Initial Campaign Email Message and Scheduled Nudges
The campaign is launched with the first email message, or nudge, and defines the first time students are notified and can begin scheduling for the campaign. Campaigns must have at a minimum of one nudge, the first message to the student, to launch the campaign. Any additional reminders can be predefined as nudges to the students that have yet to schedule for the campaign.
To set a nudge, click the + Add Nudge button.
1. Set the email subject. Merge tags can be used in the subject (see step 3).
2. Specify the body of the email. Make use of the provided tools for formatting, including proper use of links and headings. Merge tags can be used in the message body (see step 3).
3. Merge tags can be specified in either the subject or body of the message and will be dynamically replaced with the appropriate value based on the student’s name or the unique scheduling link for the student. The subject should only ever have the merge tags for first or last name. The message body must include the schedule link merge tag somewhere.
4. Attachments can be added to the email, if necessary.
5. The nudge date defines on what day the nudge will send. Nudges beyond the initial launch of the campaign will begin processing at 8:00 am and may take up to several hours to complete.
6. Preview your message with a sample student (Andrew Smith) to see how the email will be displayed and if your merge tags are working appropriately.
When you are satisfied with the nudge, save it using the Save Nudge button.
You may add as many nudges as needed but no two nudges can be set to send on the same day.
Define an Optional Success Message
If you’d like to thank the students for scheduling their campaign appointment(s), you may define a success message. This message will be sent out once the student has scheduled the final appointment required by the campaign (as defined in the campaign setup step 6, appointment limit).
The success message can be used to send final information to the student or to reinforce the positive action of scheduling the appointment. Define the success message like the nudges, using the options provided on the page.
Save Success Message when you are satisfied.
Verify and Start the Campaign
Verify all of the setup for the campaign, including defined campaign properties, students, staff, nudges, and success message. If everything looks good, launch the campaign with the Start Campaign button.
The campaign will send out the first message to students on the date defined in the first nudge. If the first nudge is set for the current day, the campaign will launch immediately and send the first nudge immediately.
Adding or Removing Students from Active Campaigns
Students can be added or removed from an active campaign at any time.
Removing Students
Edit the campaign details.
Return to the Verify Recipients step.
Check the selection boxes for the rows of students to remove. Choose Remove Selected Users from the Actions menu.
Save and Exit the campaign.
Adding Students
Edit the campaign details.
Return to the Verify Recipients step.
Click on the Add More Recipients link.
Search for and select the new students to add.
Click the Search button to find the students. Check the selection boxes for each student to add.
Click the Continue button to add the students.
Review the newly added students in the list and click on the Verify and Start link at the top of the campaign.
A notice will appear, warning that newly added students have not been invited to the campaign.
Click the Send Nudge Now button at the bottom of the campaign to load a preview of the message to be sent to the newly added students.
The system defaults to the initial campaign message though it can be edited for the newly added students.
When the subject and message contents are ready, click the button to Send to Added Students and complete the process.